BUJUMBURA July 10th (ABP) – The Minister of Finance, Budget and Economic Planning, Mr. Audace Niyonzima, opened on Thursday, June 6, 2023, a two-day workshop on sensitizing finance managers to the good practice of implementation of the 2023-2024 State Budget-Program model.
In his speech, Mr. Audace Niyonzima said that this two-day workshop follows the recommendation of the Cabinet Members to build the capacities of all stakeholders in the public expenditure chain, at a time when the budget-program reform which started in 2022, has just taken a decisive turn with the 2023-2024 budget year.
Mr. Audace Niyonzima specified that this reform will bring improvements to the current traditional budgetary system of means budget.
Moreover, he illustrated, the budget envelopes were allocated on a flat-rate basis without prior planning of development programs or activities. The consumption of the budget was made without taking into account the results to be achieved. He indicated that in the traditional budget system, finance managers were preoccupied with the consumption of budget at the expense of maximizing results with available resources.
Requests for the reorganization of budgetary appropriations were frequent and, due to a lack of results-based planning, certain budgetary appropriations fell into cancellation, which caused delays in the implementation of development projects, Mr. Audace Niyonzima reassured.
Reiterating his remarks, the Minister of Finance did not fail to point out that the budget-program model represents a profound change and introduces major innovations in the management of public finance, among other things, the primacy of the logic of performance, an annual project performance monitored by project implementation, effective allocation of available resources to government priorities.
It is worth recalling that the strengthening of multi-year strategic and operational planning is focused on the expectations and needs of citizens through the documents of “Vision Burundi, emerging country in 2040 and developed in 2060, Mr. Audace Niyonzima insisted.